Triangle drivers noticed on Wednesday that I-40 in Wake and Durham counties was teeming with cops. State troopers, county deputies and local police pointed their speed guns at a lot of drivers, and they wrote a ream of tickets.

This uncharacteristic spurt of enforcement marked the start of a two-week statewide anti-speeding campaign. It involves two agencies and two slogans: Operation Slow Down (Highway Patrol) and No Need 2 Speed (Governor's Highway Safety Program).

They handed out 169 speeding tickets in just two hours. One guy clocked at 90mph was cited for reckless driving and child endangerment, for having an unrestrained child in the front seat.

It's about time, some people say. We need to crack down on speeders.

What do you say? Have you been ticketed for speeding? Is law enforcement too lax on speeders? Too harsh?

In the past, police rarely ticketed speeders unless they exceeded the posted limit by at least 10mph. Is that still true?

Let me hear from you: bruce.siceloff@newsobserver.com. Don't forget your daytime contact info.

The NC 54 - I-40 interchange has the worst traffic congestion in Orange and Durham counties. What to do about it?

Come to a public workshop this evening in Chapel Hill to find out what transportation planners are thinking -- and to give them the benefit of your thoughts.

It's from 5 to 8 p.m. at the Friday Center on NC 54 on the east side of Chapel Hill. For more info call Leta Huntsinger with the Durham Chapel Hill Carrboro Metropolitan Planning Organization, 560-4366 ext 30423 (email: leta.huntsinger@durhamnc.gov). Let her know if you'd like to join a citizen contacts panel for this effort.

Learn about the NC54 - I-40 corridor study online at http://www.nc54-i40corridorstudy.com/

The campaign to pump more and more ethanol into our cars is fueled by a conspiracy of good intentions -- the Corn Belt agribiz lobby, the environmental lobby, and the political powers who listen to them.

It might seem hard to argue against renewable energy, reduced greenhouse emissions and reduced fossil fuel imports. But there are powerful arguments on both sides of the ethanol issue.

Admittedly, today's Road Worrier column gave scant space to these big questions. Instead, it focused narrowly on the risks of pumping E85 (85% ethanol) into a car that simply can't stomach it. (Read today's Road Worrier, with lots of reader comments.)

In fact, most of our cars can't run on E85. But most drivers are not aware that E85 can damage our cars, and that we easily can put it into our cars by mistake. The words "warning" and "damage" do not appear in the advisory labels on E85 pumps.

In addition to comments posted online with today's column -- many of them sarcastic attacks on clueless car owners, evil ethanol, or Al Gore -- I received e-mail from the ethanol industry, from another driver who damaged his car with E85, and from other folks. I'd like to hear more.

Below are the addresses of Triangle-area E85 stations, and links to online resources on E85, flex-fuel cars and renewable fuels.

First, this note from an ethanol industry executive. Phil Lampert, marketing vice president for Growth Energy Inc. of Jefferson, MO, comes down hard on the careless motorist who puts E85 into a non-flex fuel car. He seems to favor punitive action ... [MORE]

One out of every four American teens aged 16 or 17 have texted while driving, and more than 40 percent have talked on the phone while driving, according to a new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

They'd better stop. All cell phone use is illegal for drivers under 18 in North Carolina, and starting Dec. 1, texting is illegal for drivers of all ages in the state. (See Oct. 13 Road Worrier column on texting teens.)

The report released today, "Teens and Distracted Driving: Talking, texting and other uses of the cell phone behind the wheel," also says:

- 82% of U.S. teens aged 16-17 own cell phones, and 76% of these cell-phoners use them to send or receive text messages.

- 34% of texting 16-17 yr olds say they have texted while driving. That means 26% of all teens aged 16 and 17. Among teens aged 12-17, 48% say they have been in a car while the driver was texting.

- 52% of cell-phoners aged 16-17 say they have talked on the phone while driving. That means 43% of all American teens in that age group.

View I-40 / southern Beltline work in a larger map

Repaving work on Raleigh's southern Beltline this weekend will close lanes and send some drivers on a detour.

The state Department of Transportation will close the exit ramp from westbound Interstate 40 to the eastbound I-440 Outer Beltline from 9 p.m. tonight to 5 a.m. Monday.

A marked detour will send drivers west to the Rock Quarry Road exit, where they will be directed to loop back onto the eastbound lanes of the Outer Beltline.

Also this weekend, the Outer Beltline will be reduced to one lane from Rock Quarry to Poole Road.

A separate paving project on thenorthern Beltline will close some lanes on Sunday between Wade Avenue and Wake Forest Road, so road crews can apply permanent stripes to the pavement. The work will affect traffic between 9 a.m. Sunday and 6 a.m. Monday.

You might have expected hoopla for the opening of a $25.5 million highway project in eastern Wake County -- with a ceremonial ribbon-cutting and a bunch of grip-and-grin photos.

Far from it. David Bone, the Wendell town manager, buried the news in a sentence on page four of his weekly memo to the town board of commissioners:

ITEM 14. OTHER
A. The Wendell Falls interchange opened on Wednesday, November 4th.

Wendell Falls is or was a planned 1,400-acre suburb off U.S. 64/264 between Knightdale and Wendell. It was supposed to have ... [MORE]

A new study rates the Raleigh-Cary area the sixth most dangerous metro area in the nation for pedestrians.

Forty-three pedestrians died in traffic accidents here in 2007 and 2008, a rate of 2.02 pedestrian deaths for every 100,000 residents, according to a report released today by Transportation for America, a coalition of more than 300 national groups that lobbies for transportation improvements.

In a suburban area where only 1.6 percent of local residents walk to work, that high death rate gives Raleigh-Cary a Pedestrian Danger Index of 128.6, according to the Transportation for America report.

The danger list, which ranked the nation’s 50 largest metro areas, was dominated by fast-growing suburban regions where fewer than 2 percent of workers commute on foot.

The Charlotte-Gastonia-Concord area, also with 43 pedestrian deaths in 2007-08, ranked 12th on the danger list. Charlotte-Gastonia-Concord had 1.29 pedestrian deaths per 100,000 residents, in an area where only 1.2 percent of workers walking to work.

DOT will close one lane in each direction on the I-440 Beltline this Sunday so a road contractor can put down stripes on new pavement.

That'll be welcome news for drivers who had a hard time seeing the temporary stripes. Several folks have complained to the Road Worrier. A couple of weeks ago, Trudy Kappel asked:

Do you know if the lines painted on the newly repaved section of I440 are the final work? They vanish on a dark rainy night.

Sunday's striping work will take place between Wade Avenue and Wake Forest Road, and between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m.

Starting at 9 a.m. Friday, Wade Avenue traffic will be squeezed again into one lane each way, while DOT crews do more work at the Canterbury Road intersection.

A sewer leak at Canterbury prompted Raleigh and DOT officials to close the lanes for repair work Wednesday night. For an update on when Friday's work will end and the lanes will reopen, call 511 or check DOT's Triangle travel info site online.

DOT is repaving Wade this fall between Faircloth and Oberlin. That work is not supposed to impede rush hour traffic, weekdays from 6 to 9 a.m. and 4 to 7 p.m.  

The state Division of Parks and Recreation toyed for a year with the idea of opening a third automobile entrance to Umstead State Park (at Graylyn Drive), and it received a few hundred comments expressing sharp opinions on both sides.

The Raleigh City Council's Public Works Committee struggled this year with calls to erect "No Parking" signs in residential neighborhoods where Umstead users leave their cars There were sharp, competing opinions here, too.

State and city agencies helped create these problems. The Umstead maintenance gate at the corner of Trenton and Reedy Creek Roads became an even more appealing destination for park users after the city and the state extended the Reedy Creek Greenway west from the NC Museum of Art -- and stopped it there. The closest parking lot is two miles away at the art museum.

NCDOT banned parking on the state roads outside the Graylyn and Reedy Creek Road maintenance gates -- after it justified paving Graylyn by using high traffic counts that had been generated by those same parked cars.

Both the city and the state are wary of taking steps that will set uncontrollable precedents, cost money and perhaps create new sets of environmental, legal and political problems.

So the parks division refused this week to open the Graylyn gate. And the city council said ... [MORE]